intercourse it! it is too frakkin' hard!

i don't care what i may have implied before - this unconditonal, Rilkean love is frakkin' hard!
when i want to say things like "no, listen to me" or "no, don't shut me out", i can't... i have to say what my wants me to say, and so i say "whatever you need"... and i mean it
but being loving is also scary, especially trying not to control... i don't like that part

"The difference between me at five and me now is that at five Ididn't have much invested emotionally in the Universe being a certain way.  Being 'wrong' never was a concern.  It was all learning.  Now I keep reminding myself: in science there is no such thing as a failed experiment.  Learning that what I was testing simply does not work is actually a success."  Will Arentz

"I have found that I find a particular excitement in suddenly realizing I don't know the answer to something.  It's like coming to the edge of a clif in my mind.  In this space of 'nothing' or not knowing, I get this intense feeling of anticipation.  The reason I get excited is because I've come to the edge of what I know, and I realize that shortly an understanding will arrive in my head that will be staggering and will not have existed in me the moment before.  it will be this huge ah-HA.  I learned recently that an ah-ha stimulates the pleasure center of the brain.  Evidently I'm addicted to this feeling."   Mark Vicente

"Let's say a spaceship lands next to you on the coffee table (does size matter?) and inside is The Universal Book of Everything.  And you get to ask one question.  What is the question?  ... And by now the Book is feeling a little depleted, and it got to be The Universal Book of Everything by asking questions of everyone, and getting real answers.  So the question for you (the answer to which will be added in The Book) is :  What is the One Thing you know for sure?"  (from What The Bleep Do We Know, pg 2)

On January 7, my friend, Kathy Wells, died.  she was 53 years old, and has suffered from muscular dystrophy all  the time i have known her, and yet that was not what killed her.  kathy was out with friends, and either misunderstood or disregarded their instructions as to which way was clear, and rolled her motorized wheelchair into the path of an oncoming vehicle -- she was struck and killed.  her memorial service was held at noon on Jan 14...

On January 10th at 5:30PM, Bryan, the young man of 12 i posted about, lost his battle with brain cancer.  his parents and brother were with him when he died.  to the last, he never complained, but always maintained that he was 'good'... his memorial service was held at 3:00PM on Jan 14...

you might notice this put both funerals on the same day, and relatively close to each other in time.  since they were held at the same church, St. Mark's (Basking Ridge), and since we knew bryan's service would be well attended, donathan and i realized we would need to be at the second service at least 45 minutes early.  now, kathy had not been at church in over 3 years, since she had to give up her home and move into a nursing home, and therefore a low turnout was expected for her service -- over 100 people showed up.  there were very few of us present who had known her from her days at St. Mark's; most of the mourners had either known her from the very beginning of her life, or were recent friends from the nursing home.  this was a wonderful thing, for we got to know parts of kathy that we had not known before as a result of the eulogies given.  a hidden joy.  regardless of circumstance.

kathy's funeral Mass ended at 1:30, and so donathan and i rushed off to grab a quick bite, to return to church at 2:15 for bryan's service.  already there were 50 people there.  by 2:30, the count was at 200, and there were 475 people as the service began, crammed into the chancel, the balcony, and standing wherever they could.  fr rozzelle had been hit hard by this fight with death, and the fact that the healing he had prayed for did not occur in the way he wanted was a blow to him.  his sermon struggled to come to terms with this, and he was left feeling that there were no answers except that the community pulled together for bryan and his family.  but the eulogies of bryan's two godparents, an aunt and an uncle, showed that there was much more.

healing had occured, but not in the way everyone who had prayed for it might have hoped.  most, i imagine, expected/desired/prayed for physical healing, for bryan's life to be spared.  however, there was a much more important sort that took place -- there was healing of spirit and soul and family.  my friend Jeff, bryan's older brother, had become estranged from his mom and dad because of a problem with substance abuse, and he had removed himself from the home and gone to live elsewhere, with his biological dad, to come to grips with his addiction.  bryan's illness brougt him home and back  to his parents.  bryan also was able to keep his faith, and to have it grow ever deeper, so that he never once was afraid of what would come next, but always looked toward the future with unswerving anticipation.  that is true healing.  his spirit was kept whole, never crippled, and this allowed his parents to keep their faith, even though they sorely grieved.  this is a true healing --- there are many things worse than death.  and so again, joy, regardless of circumstance.

on tuesday, the 17th of January, which would have been my father's 79th birthday, we attended the wake of still another friend, a woman who was 87.  her husband of over 60 years had passed away 3 years before, and we all thought Ginny would not survive her broken heart, but she did.  in the end she died of the physical complications of Alzheimer's, without losing her mental faculties....

we are humans, and therefore death and disease, violence and mayhem are part of life.  we cannot avoid them if we are to live.  we can build walls, we can dig moats, we can shut ourselves off from every hint of danger or pain, but then we do not, cannot live.  sometime you should read the lyrics to the Byrds' song "Mind Garden", which says it best.

there are worse things than death, and death is not that strong in the end.  love is stronger than death, and so is joy...

It used to be long letters daily
e- or snail-

It used to be many instant messages...
stolen time from work or home

It used to be phone calls at odd times
or even scheduled

It used to be that I would check e-mail
several times a day
to find you there

I still check -- voice-mail, too
"there are no new messages" 

Joy Sunday... the third Sunday in Advent... always i am struck by the juxtaposition of the Joy and Wonder of the Incarnation and Nativity against the tragedy and reality of the human condition.  Four years ago, it was the Sunday of my first sermon... barely 3 months after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon... 3,000 people dead, the wife of one of the victims sitting in the front of the congregation, and i am to preach about Joy.... last year was the death of my father, and his memorial service was the day before Joy Sunday...

This year, Fr. Rozzelle called me the Thursday before and asked me to preach at the 8:00 AM service since the Sunday School was having their annual Christmas Pageant (also known as the Reign of Chaos) at the 10:00 service and there would be no sermon... his theory is that it is just as much work to prepare for one service as for two, and since he knows i am anxious to preach, why not let me do the work? 

and so, Joy Sunday, i come prepared to preach on the paradox of the joy of Incarnation into the messy reality of humanity... i am ready to remind the congregation that this is an anniversay of sorts since it was 4 years ago that i preached my first sermon and it was to this 8:00 congregation, our four year anniversary... but Fr. Rozzelle greets me with the news that a young parishioner, a boy of 12, is losing his two-year battle with brain cancer and will probably die...

as at the first Christmas, where a 15 year old girl is pregnant, by someone other than her fiancé, in a society that will stone her to death - where is the joy in that?  a man is faced with the reality of a fiancée, pregnant with someone else's child, in a society where lineage is everything, determines everything, including what prayers you are allowed to recite during sabbath ceremonies - where is the joy in that? a little boy comes into the world in poverty, with no clean hospital to check his health - where is the joy in that?  planes are steered into buildings, killing 3,000 people - where is the joy?  my father drops dead of a heart attack - where is the joy?  one of my friends is in prison, possibly for a number of years, and will not celebrate Christmas with his family - where is the joy there?  brian loses his battle with cancer and will probably die, and soon - where is the joy in that?

but joy is not dependent on circumstance.  happiness needs things to go well, but not joy.  part of the human condition is that bad things happen > children get sick, fathers die, misguided people destroy and maim, and joy comes, regardless.  it is this that Jesus comes to teach us by his birth.  he comes as an infant, in impoverished circumstance, to show that joy rises above circumstance.  his birth takes place in the shadow of the cross - not many babies get funeral ointments for birth presents- and yet it is through that very cross that we will experience the incomparable joy of being loved by God so much that God gave God's only son for us!

and so as Christmas approaches, we should embrace this paradox of heavenly Joy and human reality, for it is the very gift of Christ.  may we all work to bring this joy out into the world, ingnoring circumstance....